How will they be managed? I think the old fleet used them more than the forgeworld one, but their are still used. How they will work in the game? It seems it would be easy to do it with a mechanic in the fleet/point screen were the number escorts available are determined by the gravitic hooks (the escorts that require them that's it).

The Emperor is master of the galaxy, but the captain is master of his ship.-Popular naval saying

I'm not particularly familiar with the Tau fleets, but gravitic hooks are used to carry certain escorts that were't warp capable, right?If thats the case, I can see them being ignored for gameplay purposes, unless they were incorporated into certain ships' point costs and the escorts themselves weren't fantastic. It's certainly an interesting concept, and if it works the way I described taking a fleet of escort carriers and creating a swarm could be a viable tactic

Well the thing is Tau have two types of escorts; those that are warp capable like the Defender, the Messenger and the Castellan and those that must rely on Gravitic Hooks, like the Warden and the Orca. The Tau have four ships that have Gravitic Hooks, the Explorer and Custodian Battleships and the Merchant and Emissary Cruisers. The Protector and other "big gun" cruisers do not have this feature. The Hook is, in its own way, a special ability in of itself since it allows the Tau to field a sort of Light Escort, the Warden and Orca, despite having the fire power of a full escort is notably cheaper than its warp capable brethren.

I think a good compromise would be to for the Tau to be able to field unlimited numbers of the Defender and Castallen but only limited numbers of Orca and Warden based on how many ships have Gravitic hooks, the trade off here being that the Orca and Warden would cost substantially less than a full sized escort. This would give the Tau a way to get a force of chump blockers to protect and scout for their line ships without costing them too much and it plays heavily into their "torpedoes and carriers" theme.

Alternatively the aforementioned Hook ships could have Orca escorts for free, spawning right next to them at the start of combat, then the Tau could have an upgrade that converts them to Wardens.

As it stands, a few ships have the hooks, letting you bring 2-3 escorts in with that ship, but they are pricy ships. But the Warden/Drow they come with have all the upgrades that your escorts have, it can make for some really nasty forces.